Here’s Why Baron FinTech Fund Trimmed Mastercard Incorporated (MA)

Baron Funds, an investment management company, released its “Baron FinTech Fund” second quarter 2023 investor letter. A copy of the same can be downloaded here. In the second quarter, the fund rose 5.29% (Institutional Shares) compared to a 5.78% gain for the FactSet Global FinTech Index (Benchmark) and an 8.74% gain for the S&P 500 index. During the second quarter, the Fund performed well but fell slightly short of the Benchmark. Positive returns were achieved by two-thirds of the holdings. In addition, please check the fund’s top five holdings to know its best picks in 2023.

Baron FinTech Fund highlighted stocks like Mastercard Incorporated (NYSE:MA) in the second quarter 2023 investor letter. Headquartered in Purchase, New York, Mastercard Incorporated (NYSE:MA) is a payment technology company. On August 22, 2023, Mastercard Incorporated (NYSE:MA) stock closed at $397.84 per share. One-month return of Mastercard Incorporated (NYSE:MA) was -0.86%, and its shares gained 16.71% of their value over the last 52 weeks. Mastercard Incorporated (NYSE:MA) has a market capitalization of $374.85 billion.

Baron FinTech Fund made the following comment about Mastercard Incorporated (NYSE:MA) in its second quarter 2023 investor letter:

“We modestly trimmed Visa Inc., Mastercard Incorporated (NYSE:MA), and Accenture plc to manage the position sizes and raise capital to fund purchases elsewhere. These stocks remain full-sized positions and high-conviction ideas in the Fund.

Another fintech industry trend we’re seeing is a pickup in M&A activity, most notably in the payments sector. The year started with Nuvei’s $1.3 billion acquisition of Paya announced in January. In April, Network International received an initial takeover offer from a group of private equity firms, which was then topped by Brookfield Asset Management whose $2.8 billion offer was accepted by the Board in June. Following reports earlier this year of a bidding war between Visa Inc. and Mastercard Incorporated to acquire cloud-based issuer processor and core banking software provider Pismo.”

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Mastercard Incorporated (NYSE:MA) is in 7th position on our list of 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As per our database, 139 hedge fund portfolios held Mastercard Incorporated (NYSE:MA) at the end of second quarter which was 138 in the previous quarter.

We discussed Mastercard Incorporated (NYSE:MA) in another article and shared Warren Buffett’s growth stock picks. In addition, please check out our hedge fund investor letters Q2 2023 page for more investor letters from hedge funds and other leading investors.

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Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.